(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
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During a stay at a Latvian spa where mother and daughter were alone with each other for the first time, the daughter was struck by how little they had to say to each other, how enclosed they were in their own universes. Most of the exchanges took place by the mother taking pictures of the daughter in various poses, which had been going on throughout the daughter's life: She and the two sisters often modeled for the mother, and figure in large parts of her artistic production. After the silent spa stay, the daughter, director Sara Broos, decided to make a documentary to get closer to her mother, the renowned Swedish painter Karin Broos.
Introvert. The film is Broos' third feature-length documentary, and consists of clips from the director's childhood, interviews and tableaus of the family from the present, and photos and clips of his mother's wild teenage years in Malmö in the 1960s, when she experimented with drugs, had eating disorders and " sought confirmation from men'. Broos says that as a child she wrote letters to her mother's paintings to understand why they were so unhappy. To some extent, the documentary form can be compared to a letter: Both are created at one point in time, and arrive at the recipient somewhat later through a time jump that entails distance, but also room for reflection.
In the documentary For you naked (2012) follows Broos' godfather Lars Lerin in his attempt to find love with a Brazilian he meets via a personals ad. Lerin is also a highly recognized Swedish artist, best known for his watercolours, and is plagued by social anxiety and a past as an alcoholic. But i For you naked the director's only role is an encouraging supporter in the godfather's struggle against his own thoughts and varying ability to engage emotionally. Thematic similarities can nevertheless be found between these films and the short documentary Homeland (2015), which is about a Syrian refugee woman's passionate relationship with music. All three have protagonists who turn their gaze inward to understand and endure their own lives.
The daughter's look at her mother reveals great admiration, but also a desire for a greater degree of symbiosis than what the mother is able to offer.
As a 17-year-old, Karin Broos wrote in her diary: "I can't do anything, I just lie in bed and wait. On what I don't know. And then I eat. The whole room is empty, me too. … And then this cursed body you can't get rid of. It hangs with everything.” From the time she was 15 to 22, Karin experienced constant hell. Her daughter Sara also suffered from anorexia and bulimia as a teenager, something that took the mother a long time to realize, as her daughter's lifestyle was so different from her own: Where the mother was outgoing and experimental, the daughter became introverted and brooding. However, they had self-loathing, shame and a doubtful relationship with their own identity in common.
The daughter's look at her mother reveals great admiration, but also a desire for a greater degree of symbiosis than what the mother is able to offer.
Bergmann parallel. More than a traditional documentary appears Reflections as a painterly self-portrait – or rather a stylized attempt to understand his mother in the extension of the attempt to understand himself. Ever since she was little, Broos tried to look like her mother by wearing bright red lipstick and black kajal. Other of the mother's characteristics also appeared in the daughter, such as the low self-esteem and the facility to express herself visually.
The film's style and tone is heavily aestheticized with color-saturated imagery, striking compositions, gliding lyrical editing and a rich, sometimes intrusive soundtrack of slow 60s rock dominated by wailing electric guitar. The use of music, sensual close-ups and the saturated color spectrum constitute a kind of "rock star filter" and bring to mind mood-driven filmmakers such as David Lynch or Terrence Malick. One can suspect that the director has allowed the aesthetics of the mother's colorful past and detailed paintings to "bleed into the documentary", which enhances the experience of being in a moving museum of the family's history.
Large parts of the material were filmed in Värmland, which became Karin Broos' new home when she joined her husband. The estate and the beautiful nature could have been the backdrop for a Bergmann drama, and the parallel is also visible in thematic threads such as the collapse of communication and painful distortions in family relationships. A scene I will carry with me for a long time is of a lumberjack robot's "meditative" work session. With inhuman precision, one upright tree after another is cut loose, cleaned of branches and cut into suitable pieces. At an unnaturally high pace, a generation's growth is transformed into a useful product. Behind are bleeding stumps in a ribbed forest.
Existential questions. Judging by the rich range of childhood clips, the Broos family has been keen to document each other. It is as if the family members are most comfortable viewing each other through artistic media such as film, photography or paintings. A question that vibrates throughout the film is whether mother and daughter are able to communicate without the conversation being prompted by an artistic intention. The three sisters seem demonstratively unaffected by being depicted, deliberately unattractive as they stare defiantly and without a smile into the camera with their striking facial features and strong-willed lips. The mother's love is most strongly expressed when she focuses on recreating her daughters in the paintings. The assumption is strengthened by the mother's declaration that she is happiest when she paints, when time and space disappear. This is easy to recognize: an artistic trance is very effective in numbing upsetting self-consciousness.
It is as if the family members are most comfortable viewing each other through artistic media such as film, photography or paintings.
Is it a protection mechanism to allow yourself to be objectified, to objectify yourself? Does self-loathing become easier to bear if you let observers in? Broos turns the camera in all directions with a kaleidoscopic effect, but the closer the camera comes in on her and her mother, the clearer the distance becomes. As a teenager, Broos decided that she did not want to be like her mother, she wanted to stop seeing herself through others. But the opposite seems to have happened: As she herself must be aware, the documentary completes the staging of the self that began with the mother.
The aesthetic moves are sometimes distracting, especially because all the women in the family are initially strikingly beautiful. Picture-perfect teenage girls suffering from eating disorders and self-harm are an effective cliché in music videos and rose blogs. But Broos' project to get to the bottom of his own family mythology seems sincere rather than coquettish, and the film's shocking beauty contributes to an enjoyable experience that does not prevent existential questions about identity, the need for expression and substitutes for vital closeness.
To drown. In one of the film's most memorable moments, the director descends naked into a murky pond up to her neck, where she waits for a few moments before submerging herself. The image is held for a long time, and is broken before the head reappears. Not until the end of the scrolling text does she shoot up again, gracefully gasping for air. The little girl deep inside me held her breath for half the movie, unable to relax until the director came back up. This is what it can feel like to drown in your own critical gaze, to be refused to take a breather and move on, unhindered by yourself.
